I don't deny the fact that exceptional people built this nation. That is without question. I'm proud of that. However, this idea that Americans of today are more exceptional than other people in this world is such non sense. Stupid, entitled, materialistic, and arrogant is what Americans are.
My god, just look at the Tea Party. There are foreigners who admire America, but when they look at the Tea Party, they just scoff or laugh. Tea baggers, in terms of intelligence, are much stupider than the average person the world over. They are also selfish, arrogant and racist. I mean this is the movement who bitches about government spending but also insists on ridiculous tax cuts. How can you respect people who don't understand the concept of revenue?
And yes, I do think there are some great Americans living today. I just don't think being American has anything to do with it.
In terms of citizens, America is not at all superior to the rest of the world. Let's stop pretending that it is.
Americans literally are exceptional, because America is superior to the rest of the world, in every conceivable way.
What is literally NOT exceptional; such being rather pedestrian, are the Progressives who were born here in the United States, succumb to the infection of
Foreign Ideas Hostile to the Principles that Define America and subsequently spend their time crying about how unexceptional
they are and somehow THAT this is supposed to be relevant to
Americans.
As a Moderator on this very site recently noted, this demonstrates perfectly that:
THERE ARE NO LEFTIST AMERICANS!
Are you that ignorant? Are you aware how sad our public education system is? It's a joke.
Yes, you and your ilk completely fucked it up.... which is why I never let my kids near a public school.
Oh right of course. Everything bad is because of liberals. Get real, dude. If you can't explain HOW liberals fucked up the education system then don't bother making the claim.
In the United States today, the abuse of liberal education by our colleges and universities is rampant. Here are 10 example of how such abuse corrupts character -- and not only that of students -- and erodes the qualities they will need to play a constructive role in public debate about the principles and policies that should guide the nation.
1. Our colleges and universities have hollowed liberal education’s core. Most impose a few general distribution requirements in broad categories of inquiry. They thereby send the message to students that there are no basic principles, ideas, and events, and no classic works of literature, politics, economics, philosophy, and religion with which all educated men and women should be familiar. This approach encourages students to equate education with the random accumulation of information and the clever recapitulation of assumptions and convictions.
2. The curriculum in higher education has been politicized. Although not always overt, this is accomplished through the readings professors choose, the ideas and events they present, the questions they ask and those they glide over or suppress, and the interpretations they treat as beyond reproach and those they treat as beneath contempt.
This attitude flows naturally from the professoriate’s own ideology -- it’s not an organized conspiracy -- but the upshot is that in class after class, students are exposed to debate that is largely restricted to progressive alternatives. Meanwhile, conservative opinions are either blithely ignored or contemptuously dismissed. This fosters arrogance among progressive students, resentment among conservatives, and dismay among those -- progressive, conservative, or nonaligned -- who come to college seeking intelligent exploration of the conflicting perspectives that constitute the life of a liberal democracy.
3. Grade inflation is widespread. Faculty, particularly at elite institutions, have made A’s and A-minuses routine, B-plus a gentle reproach, B a harsh reproach, and anything less unthinkable. By conferring unearned approbation, professors inflate students’ self-esteem and undercut their self-respect.
Students detect the scam. They know that distinguishing among levels of performance on their papers would require time and energy from their professors, or from the graduate students who often do the grading in large classes. By slapping high grades and a few vague comments on papers rather than patiently explaining to students where their work is weak and how it can be improved, professors instill in students disdain for the academic process and an extravagant sense of entitlement.
4. Speech codes, written and unwritten, have become commonplace. Some codes prohibit hate speech and some merely prohibit offensive speech. The aim is to outlaw speech that causes hurt, which is typically defined subjectively.
To enforce the rules, higher education turns faculty and administrators into thought police and students into informers. This chills the speech of those -- students and professors -- trying out new ideas or defending unpopular causes. It transforms the university from a forum for the robust exchange of ideas to a training ground for the repackaging and regurgitation of dogma.
5. Prevalent disciplinary procedures upend fundamental features of due process. The accused in sexual misconduct cases is routinely deprived of adequate representation and the opportunity to confront and cross-examine his accuser.
6. Our colleges and universities have engaged in hypocrisy over affirmative action. They claim that easing standards in hiring and admission for minorities advances their educational mission by promoting diversity in the student body and faculty. But they want it both ways. When fair-skinned and blue-eyed former Harvard Law School professor Elizabeth Warren was accused in her 2012 Massachusetts senatorial campaign of gaming the system by claiming Native American ancestry at various stages in her academic career, she and her allies were quick to declare that she derived no advantage from affirmative action policies and that all her achievements were her own, thereby casting aspersions on the practice and its beneficiaries.
7. The higher education establishment collaborates with the government to maintain the student loan racket. At many private institutions, the cost of a four-year bachelor’s degree now exceeds $220,000. Even students at state universities can graduate owing six-figures -- debt that is non-dischargeable in bankruptcy.
When the lawmakers make more funds available in the form of loans, universities raise tuition to grab the government largesse. At the same time, data show that students are failing to develop those practical skills colleges and universities continue to insist that they specialize in honing -- precise reading, clear thinking, and lucid writing. At elite universities, students can console themselves that at least they are obtaining a respected credential and gaining entry into valuable social networks. Such consolation, however, only reinforces the cynical message that liberal education is a charade.
8. Our colleges and universities exploit the most vulnerable members of their communities: graduate students. In the best case, grad students in the humanities and social sciences receive subsistence level support while performing essential tasks such as teaching sections and grading papers, which faculty generally consider drudgery.
These same graduate students become acutely dependent on the faculty for whom they teach and grade and who advise their dissertations. This is because career-making and career-breaking decisions for the students turn not on thorough reading of their work by voting members of departments -- that rarely happens -- but on letters written by a small number of faculty advisers.
The result is a kind of “closed shop” that encourages groupthink, and discourages boldness and dissent.
9. Faculty members at our institutions of higher education are required to make hiring, promotion, and tenure decisions in matters where they lack competence. Over the last 40 years or so, disciplines have divided and subdivided, fractured and multiplied.
On any given personnel decision, only a small proportion of faculty in a department will have the mastery of the subject necessary to offer an informed and independent judgment of the quality of the candidate’s work. Consequently, faculty members are habituated to offering opinions and casting votes on matters of which they are ignorant. This fosters the formation of an authoritarian spirit that advances and submits to declarations based on status rather than genuine knowledge and real expertise, and it generates an authoritarian tone and style that reverberate throughout the halls of higher education.
10. Our colleges and universities use a system of peer review for professional journals and university presses that is transparent where it should be confidential and confidential where it should be transparent.
Journals typically use a double-blind system in which neither author nor reviewer knows the other’s identity. Yet editors easily assign manuscripts for review to obtain desired outcomes because they can quickly determine where an article fits in methodological debates and whether it contains a politically disapproved message. Indeed, since any scholar with the expertise to qualify as a reviewer is also likely to be a player whose own academic fortunes will be helped or hindered by the publication of the article under review, all reviewers are also interested parties.
Read more:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2013/02/02/10_ways_liberal_education_fails_students_--_and_society_116897-2.html#ixzz3QcHCCpWM
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